Honors Requirements (For those not using the Points System)

Two Honors Contracts (or one Honors Contract and an Honors Independent Study)

Honors Contracts enable students to develop, under the guidance of a professor, an enriched curriculum from an upper-division courses in which the student is enrolled.

Honors Contracts demand that students achieve “greater depth and rigor” than what is required of their classmates and might well be viewed as a primer for graduate study.

Students must have completed at least one Honors Contract or Independent Study by the beginning of their senior year. Except by special permission, only one Honors course may be pursued at a time.

A thesis or capstone project

Students whose majors already require a major need not complete a “separate” Honors Senior Thesis; they will submit paperwork explaining how their major thesis demonstrates unusual academic depth and rigor.

Students whose majors do NOT require a thesis may sign up for independent study or topics courses in their departments, or register for HON 197, or develop their theses independently.

Theses are developed with an eye to public presentation; this may be at a conference, a departmental thesis forum, the SMC Spring Symposium, or another venue of the student’s choosing.

SMC Honors Program Co-curricular Requirements

Two service days (4 hours each) per semester, at least one of which is in the SMC Legacy Garden, logged with the Program in December and May

Attendance of at least two[†] Endorsed Events per month, logged with the Program at the end of each month

[*] Students who know they are planning for Honors should take an Honors section of English 5. If the student has already taken English 5, this requirement is waived.

[†] Two events is the expectation for the months that are spent wholly on campus, that is, September, October, November, March, April and May. One event will be attended in December and February. Attendance is not required during January Term.